


as long it won't separate you from me (i'll be fine)

by coruscatingcatastrophe



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beetlejuice, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crack Treated Seriously, Established Relationship, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, Ghosts, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, honestly i keep tagging angst but theres probably as much humor, it started as a beetlejuice au and spiraled out of control, sorta - Freeform, this is another of my crackfics that turned serious halfway through, to be clear keith and lance are ghosts, vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27319981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coruscatingcatastrophe/pseuds/coruscatingcatastrophe
Summary: A little intrigued—not that she’d ever admit it—Pidge begins to climb the stairs. But before she even reaches halfway, the door—slamsshut. All on its own, or so it seems. Pidge pauses, brows creasing in confusion, as she turns to look down at her dog. “Did you see that?” she asks.Peculiarly, she notes that Bae Bae’s fur is bristled, and he growls at the door before barking twice.That’s weird. Bae Bae never growls. Turning back to the door, Pidge feels unsettled, but she tells herself not to jump to ridiculous conclusions. There’s a logical explanation for everything. Maybe there was a gust of wind from the air conditioner, or the doorframe isn’t level. Whatever it is, she’s going to figure it out.-Or, a Beetlejuice au (kind of). Pidge isn't a fan of her new house, Lance and Keith are the ghosts haunting her attic, and together they hatch a plot to convince Shiro and Adam to skedaddle out of the house. There may be demon summoning involved.But seriously, Adam. Getting your hair set on firereallyisn't that bad.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Keith & Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith/Lance (Voltron), Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 8
Kudos: 92





	as long it won't separate you from me (i'll be fine)

**Author's Note:**

> aghhh i have forty minutes until halloween is over and didn't realize until yesterday that i hadn't written a halloween fic!! i totally planned to, but the original fic i had for halloween got swept under all my other projects and there's no way i could've finished it on time, so now you have this: a rushed, beetlejuice-inspired fic that i only thought of yesterday afternoon. apologies for any spelling mistakes (i am sure there are many). please enjoy, and happy halloween!!

Let it go on the record that Pidge hates the new house. But not nearly as much as she hates their realtor. 

“Don’t you think this house is a bit . . . _large,_ for such a small and—unconventional family?” Karen the real estate agent says to Shiro and Adam the day they move in. Karen is, as you might expect, your typical Karen: bleached blonde, bubblegum snapping, artificially plumped lips and a perpetually arched eyebrow, as if she’s prepared to judge anything before there’s even anything to judge. 

Not to mention the lowkey, highkey homophobic energy she’s giving off. Pidge had seen the looks she’d shot at Shiro’s and Adam’s wedding rings when they met outside. Pidge is one poorly-disguised snub away from decking Karen in the face. 

Admittedly, Pidge would probably want to smack Karen in the face even if she wasn’t homophobic, or even really a Karen. Pidge is just always in a violent mood, lately. 

(Her therapist, Coran, says it’s all part of the grieving process and is perfectly normal. Coran had also given Shiro a pamphlet titled: _“So Your Teenager’s Had a Run-In With the Law,”_ after Pidge’s last therapy session, so she’s not really sure what to believe.)

(Either way, if Karen snaps her bubblegum any louder, someone is going to have to _catch these hands.)_

“I think it’s a perfectly appropriate-sized house,” Shiro says, the smooth diplomat that he is. “Especially if we adopt younger kids further down the road like we plan to.” 

“Right, of course,” Karen says, with a slight downturn of her mouth. Pidge straightens out of her slouch in indignation, but before she can do anything, Shiro’s hand settles onto her shoulder. 

“Pidge, why don’t you go pick out your room?” Shiro suggests. Pidge hears the underlying meaning: _before I have to deal with a lawsuit._ Grumbling, Pidge tightens her grip on her backpack, sends one last withering glare to Karen’s dumb curls, and spins to stomp upstairs. Bae Bae follows after her, his nails clicking behind her stomps. 

Let it also go on record that Pidge doesn’t hate this house for no good reason, okay? This is the first time she’s seen it in person, but she’d hated the pictures online, and it only looks worse now that she’s here. The floral wallpaper all over everything is atrocious. The stairs creak so much that she can’t even stomp without being one-upped by their creakiness. The air is musty, the floors are faded, there’s dust everywhere, and probably worse than everything else, it’s _nothing_ like home. 

Shiro and Adam say that’s why they bought it. They wanted something that’s as different from her home in Arizona as possible, because apparently a fresh start is what every teenager needs after their family dies tragically in their home. Pidge thinks that’s a load of bullshit. _No_ tragedy is enough to warrant moving to a house that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the early nineteenth century. 

Granted, she knows Shiro and Adam are going to be renovating pretty much everything over the next few months. They’re _house flippers—_ it’s practically in their nature to want to take on the most challenging house available and fix it. 

_Maybe that’s the same reason why they took me in,_ Pidge thinks bitterly, even though she knows as soon as she does that it’s not true. Pidge has known Shiro since she was a baby. He’s her godfather. He’s practically family anyway, even without the recent adoption papers to legalize it. 

Anyway, personal brooding aside, the house is going to need some _major_ work. Apparently the last couple who lived here had also bought it to fix up themselves, but they’d died two months after moving in, so there isn’t a whole lot that’s been done to the place. Some carpet is ripped up in a room, here; a half-empty bucket of light blue paint sits abandoned in the corner of the next room, there. 

There’s a crib in the center of that room. Pidge’s mouth dries up, and she leaves as quickly as she’d entered. 

That’s another thing. No one had bothered to take out the last family’s things, so they’re all going to have to do it themselves. The thought of touching dead people’s things makes Pidge feel slightly sick. 

The hall intersects with a second hall at the end, and Pidge decides on a whim to go left. She immediately finds herself faced with a second set of stairs. There’s an open door at the top of them. 

A little intrigued—not that she’d ever admit it—Pidge begins to climb the stairs. But before she even reaches halfway, the door— _slams_ shut. All on its own, or so it seems. Pidge pauses, brows creasing in confusion, as she turns to look down at her dog. “Did you see that?” she asks. 

Peculiarly, she notes that Bae Bae’s fur is bristled, and he growls at the door before barking twice. 

That’s weird. Bae Bae _never_ growls. Turning back to the door, Pidge feels unsettled, but she tells herself not to jump to ridiculous conclusions. There’s a logical explanation for everything. Maybe there was a gust of wind from the air conditioner, or the doorframe isn’t level. Whatever it is, she’s going to figure it out. 

She walks up the last few stairs, reaches out to turn the knob. It doesn’t budge. Frowning, she tries again, but it’s definitely locked. 

“What the hell,” she mutters under her breath. She’s going to have to go back downstairs and ask Shiro for the keys. Now she _has_ to know what’s behind that door. 

“Come on, Bae Bae,” she whistles, tromping back down the short flight of stairs. “Let’s hope Karen is gone by now. If not, I give you full permission to bite her face off.” 

Bae Bae wags his tail. Pidge decides this means he’s fully on-board with murdering Karen, and pats the top of his head. “Good boy.” 

  
  


_____ 

  
  


“I want them gone,” Lance says, arms crossed where he leans against the window frame, scowling down at the family bringing boxes into the house. “How could someone sell our _house?_ And who in their right mind would _buy_ it? We died two months ago, Keith.” 

Keith sighs, setting down his book. “We didn’t die in the house, though,” he points out. Lance turns his scowl on him. 

“You’re seriously not helping.” 

“I’m sorry,” Keith says, raising his hands in defense. “I’m just saying. You do know we bought this house after someone _literally_ died in it, right?” 

“Yeah, but that’s because we’re crazy,” Lance mutters. He turns back to the window so Keith can’t see his expression. “This is our house,” he repeats, ignoring the way his eyes go misty when he blinks. The stupid thing about being dead is that it hasn’t affected his ability to cry at _all._ In fact, pretty much all he’s done over the past two months is cry. He doesn’t even have to rehydrate between breakdowns to produce more tears. “Why should someone else get to have it? It’s not . . . it’s not _fair.”_

“I know,” Keith softly says. After a moment, he comes over to stand with Lance, wrapping his arms around him from behind. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. 

Lance sighs, slumping back into Keith and murmuring, “It’s not your fault.” Keith feels warm, the way he always has been, and even though that should be comforting, it isn’t, really. Lance isn’t sure anything can comfort him, right now. He and his husband are _ghosts,_ trapped in the house they were going to start their lives in together, and now someone else is moving in just to twist the knife a little bit deeper. 

Yeah. There’s nothing that can make this situation better. 

They stand there for what could be minutes or hours after that—time isn’t really a concept when you’re dead—watching the two buff, handsome dudes move their stuff into _their_ home. Lance remembers seeing a teenager a while ago, with a dog. 

He and Keith were going to get a dog. The bitterness that swells in his throat is overwhelming. 

Before he can fall too far into that spiral, though, he hears footsteps creaking in the hall below their room. Freezing, Lance listens, wondering if maybe he imagined it. But then he hears the footsteps again, this time on the stairs, and his limbs thaw out. He storms over to the door while Keith sighs, “Lance . . .” behind him, and sure enough, the teenager is at the bottom of the stairs, peering up curiously. Lance knows she doesn’t see him, though; the irritating realtor never responded when he tried to talk to her, that one time she came to take photos of the house to put it back on the market. Nor did she react when he slammed all the doors and windows and messed with the electricity when she was bringing people over to see the house. 

So the girl doesn’t see him, but the dog does; as soon as Lance reveals himself at the top of the stairs, the little terrier begins to growl, fur standing up on end like it’s just rolled around with a balloon. Lance hisses back at it, scowls at the girl as she takes another step onto the stairs, and slams the door shut with a clattering _BANG!_ Then he locks it for good measure. 

“Lance,” Keith repeats, frowning a little as Lance turns back to him. He smiles airily at his husband, then breezes back over to settle on their couch. He reaches for the remote and pauses, realizing that there’s something on their coffee table that wasn’t there before. 

“Hey, dearest?” Lance says with a frown. “What’s this?” 

He picks up the pamphlet and reads the cover. _“‘So Your House Has Been Infested With Humans.’_ Is it just me, or does the timing of finding this seem super . . . convenient?” 

Keith comes to peer over Lance’s shoulder. “‘Have you found yourself in need of a bio-exorcist? There’s only one ghost to call. Call _‘Lotor’_ three times to set up your free consultation,’” he reads. 

“Like, a phone number?” Lance frowns, flipping over the pamphlet to see if the number’s on the back. Then he opens it, but that’s just a bunch of information about the hazards untreated human infestations can cause. “I don’t see any way that we can call this _Lotor_ person.” 

“This seems . . . kind of sketchy,” Keith says cautiously. “The timing _does_ seem weirdly convenient. I don’t think we want anything to do with this Lotor dude. What does bio-exorcist even _mean?”_

“It means whatever you want it to mean,” a dry voice says behind them. Both Keith and Lance stiffen, whirling around to where the voice came from by the window. Suddenly, a pale-haired, purple-skinned person is standing in their room, looking as at-ease as if this were _his_ room. “Or whatever you can afford. What degree of exorcism are you looking for? I have my basic scaring package, and my deluxe death package. But as you can imagine, the death package is far more pricey. Murder takes a lot out of the dead person doing it, did you know?” 

“I did not know,” Lance says, suddenly intrigued. “Wait, how is that even possible? I thought ghosts couldn’t harm the living.” 

Lotor scoffs, tossing his pale white hair back. Oddly, the purple skin doesn’t make him look like an ultradead zombie. It kind of adds something to his overall aesthetic. Lance frowns. Maybe if he and Keith could be purple, being dead wouldn’t be so boring and horrible. 

“Of course ghosts can harm the living. What sort of fairytale afterlife have you been living in?” Lotor says. Lance scowls at the condescension in the dead guy’s tone. 

“Well _pardon me_ for not being an expert in the areas of being dead. Keith and I have kind of been forced to wing it, you know. It’s not like they make a handbook on how to be a ghost.” 

Lotor raises his eyebrows. With a snap of his fingers and a puff of smoke, a book drops onto Lance’s lap. The cover reads: _Ghosting 101._

“Okay, that is _not_ what ghosting means,” Lance points out. 

“Isn’t it? That’s just another thing the living stole from the dead,” Lotor says. Lance has to admit, he might have a point. “That’s why they all must pay.” 

Okay, maybe he doesn’t have as much of a point. “What . . . _exactly_ do you mean by that?” 

The purple ghost—Lance is fairly certain Lotor is a ghost by now—flashes a white grin. “How badly do you want these humans gone?” 

Keith finally interjects himself into the conversation. “We don’t want them _dead,_ if that’s what you mean,” he says. He eyes Lance, as if to say, _right, honey?_

Lance acquiesces with a sigh and a small nod. “Killing them would be kind of wrong,” he agrees. “I just want them out of the house. What’d you say your other package was, again?” 

_“Lance,”_ Keith hisses. “You can’t be serious.” 

“Oh, come on,” Lance says, “You don’t want people here any more than I do.” 

Keith says nothing to that. Lance smiles smugly, turning back to Lotor. 

“So,” he says, “What sort of payment plans do you offer?” 

  
  


_____

  
  


Unfortunately, Lotor’s plans for scaring away the new inhabitants of their home are a bit . . . extreme, even for Lance. It involves summoning a demon called _Voltron_ to do a bunch of graphic horror-movie shit, and the informative pamphlet Lotor poofs into existence for him and Keith to read turns his stomach a little bit. So Keith politely says they’d like to think it over—Keith had never been the more diplomatic of the two of them when they were alive, but Lance supposes death has changed both of them in a few surprising ways—and Lotor disappears with a shrug and a reminder to, “Call me.” 

“So,” Lance turns to his husband with a sigh, “What now?” 

Keith, predictably, sits down and starts reading _Ghosting 101._ “Maybe if we know more about being ghosts, we can find more options,” he says, and though Lance hates the idea specifically because it involves waiting, there isn’t really anything else he can suggest. So Lance slouches against Keith’s shoulder, pretending to lazily read for a while before closing his eyes and dozing off. At least being dead hasn’t taken away Lance’s ability to nap. Sleeping is one of life’s—and death’s, apparently—few pleasures. 

“Hey—listen to this,” Keith says after a while, effectively stirring Lance back to consciousness. 

“What?” he says, lashes fluttering as he cuddles even closer to Keith. “Whad’ya find, babe?” 

“There’s this place called the Netherworld,” Keith begins, “Apparently, the recently deceased can go there for more information on . . . y’know, being dead.” 

Lance perks up. Getting out of the house for a while? Even if it’s just to go to some kind of afterlife, it sounds way more interesting than just hanging out _here_ for eternity. 

That’s one of those inexplicable things about being dead—they can’t leave their house. They’d tried, the same day they woke up and realized they’d died in a car accident, but opening the front and back doors both lead them out into some kind of desert wasteland with giant sandworm monsters. Keith had befriended and lovingly dubbed one of them “Kosmo,” and sometimes he goes out and chills with him. He’s a total desert rat. 

Lance, on the other hand, hates sand unless there’s a large body of water directly next to it. If there’s no ocean, there’s no point in a beach. Lance thinks of his home in Cuba, right by the sea and beneath rays of warm, life-giving sunshine, and his heart twinges with pain. He’s never going to get to see it again. 

They were supposed to go visit his parents this summer. He doesn’t understand why everything had to go so _wrong._

He doesn’t want to think about it, now. All he’s done for _weeks_ is think about it. So, “Let’s go to this Netherworld place,” he says. “Sounds like it could be fun. How do we get there, though?” 

Keith frowns at the book. “Well, the steps given in the book are really stupid, but I guess we have no choice but to try it and hope it works,” he says, “Where did we put the chalk?” 

  
  


_____

  
  


Pidge doesn’t remember the key to the attic until later that evening. She has to help Shiro and Adam unload the last of the boxes, then she takes Bae Bae for a walk, _then_ when she gets back, Shiro and Adam have picked up takeout. It’s as they’re eating on the floor in the living room that Shiro asks her if she’s picked out a room yet, and that’s when she remembers. 

“One of the doors is locked,” she says, “I was wondering if you knew where the keys are.” 

Shiro frowns. “That’s strange,” he says, “Karen said all the doors should be unlocked.” 

“Oh,” Pidge replies. “Well, maybe it’s just jammed, I dunno. Still, can I have the keys just to check?” 

Shiro locates the keys for her after dinner, and Pidge trots back upstairs, Bae Bae once again on her heels. When she gets to the bottom of the attic stairs though, Bae Bae stops to sit down, growling unhappily. 

“Would you knock it off?” Pidge rolls her eyes. “It’s not like there’s a _ghost_ up there, or something.” She clicks her tongue, trying to get him to follow, but he refuses to budge. So with a sigh, she turns back to the door and says, “Fine. But if I die, it’s totally your fault.” 

She ascends the stairs and tries the first key on the ring. Predictably, it doesn’t work, so she starts making her way through all of them. It’s about midway through that she hears the lock _click,_ and when she turns the knob, the door opens easily. 

Feeling more curious than she maybe should, considering she’s probably just going to find an empty, old attic, Pidge steps inside. But what she finds is . . . surprising at best, unsettling at worst. 

It appears to be a fully furnished master bedroom. It’s a wide, open space, with brand new gleaming wooden floors and a fresh coat of light gray paint. The windows at the far end of the room are wide, letting in the dying rays of sunlight to fall faintly across the floor. The curtains are a pleasant, sheer cobalt blue. 

It’s evident to her immediately that the couple who lived here before had completely updated this space. The air conditioning up here appears to be fully functional, and doesn’t make the wheezing noises the ones on the first and second floor do. The wooden beams that stretch across the ceiling are modern and tastefully rustic at the same time. The light from the bathroom doesn’t flicker or make quiet buzzing noises. 

Wait. Pidge turns to face the open bathroom door, brows coming together in confusion as she stares. The bathroom light is on. 

If this house has been empty for two months, and no one’s been in this house in that time except for them and the realtor, then _why_ is the bathroom light on? And there’s no way it’s been on for a very long time, because the lightbulbs would have eventually burnt out. 

Or maybe . . . maybe not, she thinks, trying to puzzle it out in her head. Maybe the bulbs are ultra-grade bulbs. Maybe the wiring up here is faulty, and it’s the one thing the couple who lived here before hadn’t gotten around to fixing. 

Pidge turns back to observe the rest of the room. There’s a TV on the opposite wall from the bed, a coffee table and small sofa situated in front of it. There are two empty coffee cups nestled on coasters next to a stack of books and the television remote. The book settled on top is slightly askew, and when Pidge steps closer to read the cover, she frowns when she sees the words, _“Ghosting 101.”_

Next to the book is a pamphlet, and the title of that might be even more bizarre. She picks it up, flipping through it briefly and gathering words like _“afterlife,”_ and _“bio-exorcism.”_ Pidge doesn’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound good. The parts about the afterlife are strange too. She finds more about that in the book, but before she can get very far into it, Adam calls her from downstairs to come help with something. 

She contemplates for a moment, then takes both the book and the pamphlet. She’ll read them both later tonight. “I’m coming!” she calls, turning to close the door behind her. 

As she’s shutting it, she catches a glimpse of what might be the most unsettling thing about the attic. There, in the wastebasket next to the door, a stack of interior design magazines sit in a discarded mass, ripped nearly beyond all legibility. She might not have even recognized them for what they are if those same magazines didn’t take up shelves of space in Adam and Shiro’s office, and she hadn’t spent the entire drive here boredly flipping through them after her phone died. 

  
  


_____

  
  


The Netherworld is a pretty wild place. When they first arrive, they have to sit in a weird waiting area with creepy dead people. A pile of ash asks Lance if he wants a cigarette. Which he does _not,_ because cigarettes are _so_ bad for you. 

Keith actually considers it. Lance elbows him in the ribs. 

Thankfully, they don’t actually have to wait as long as the unfriendly receptionist said they’d have to, because after a while, a woman emerges from a door and calls their names. Keith and Lance exchange surprised looks and shrug, then get up to follow her through the door. 

The woman is beautiful by death’s standards, Lance supposes. She has the same pale, shimmery hair as Lotor, though hers is curly. Her skin is dark, and she has glowing pink marks on her cheeks and around her bare shoulders. She leads them to what appears to be an office, then steps aside to let them in. 

They settle into the two chairs facing the desk, and the woman strides around to sit behind it. Then she meets them both with an unimpressed stare. 

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to show up here?” is the first thing she says.

“Um.” Lance glances to Keith, confused. “No . . . ? Uh, sorry, but who exactly are you?” 

“I am Allura. Your case-worker. Though I was _about_ to pass you off to one of the interns, since you couldn’t deign to meet with me before now. Did you _not_ find the book I sent for you?” 

This time, Keith answers, brows scrunching together in the middle. “Yeah, we found it earlier today, and came as soon as we did. You . . . sent it before?” 

“Of course I did,” Allura says sharply. “I _always_ send out the books upon receiving the day’s death records. Are you implying that I am not good at my job?” 

“I . . . no, of course not.” Keith frowns. “I’m just a bit—confused. If you sent us the book, then why didn’t we find it before?” 

Allura mutters what sounds like a string of curses under her breath. “It was probably one of the interns. Must I always do _everything_ around here myself? Apologies, then, for your difficulty in finding the book. I will have a long talk with them before letting them return to their haunts this evening.” 

Looking at the dark fire in Allura’s eyes, Lance immediately feels sympathy for those interns. “No, seriously, that’s not necessary,” he reassures her, “Look, whatever happened, I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. And we’re here now, so let’s just move on. You said you’re our case-worker . . . ?” 

This seems to calm Allura down a bit. “Right, of course,” she says. “Yes, I am. What that means is, I’m your guide to your life as ghosts. I’m here to help you grow accustomed to your new state of being, as well as answers all of your questions regarding this phase and the next one, should you choose to pass on.” 

“Pass on?” Lance exchanges an uneasy look with Keith, who reaches out to take his hand, squeezing it comfortingly. “I don’t think we know what that means. Isn’t this . . . all there is?” 

“We have much to talk about,” Allura says, instead of outright answering the question. “Why don’t we begin by discussing your current goals?” 

“Goals?” 

“Your aspiring achievements,” Allura clarifies, “Things you wish to learn how to as a ghost, such as walking through walls, or travelling through the sand zones without being eaten by a sandworm.” 

“Oh, I can already do that,” Keith says. “The sand zone is great. I have a pet sandworm named Kosmo.” 

Allura blinks at that, apparently mystified. “Oh. Well that is . . . interesting,” she says. 

Lance is quiet for a long moment. Then he says, “What about learning how to—scare people?” 

“Scare people?” 

“Yeah,” Lance sighs. “Some people just moved into our house, and I want them out. And we talked to this guy named Lotor who claimed to be a human exterminator, but—” 

“Lotor?” Allura says sharply. Lance falters. 

“Uh, yeah? Why, do you like, know him . . . ?” 

“You must never trust Lotor,” she says gravely. “He is a con-artist, and wicked at his core. He wishes to bring terror and destruction upon all humanity, and he would do the same to you and your home if you let him.” 

“Noted.” Lance nods slowly, wary of the fire that’s rekindled in her eyes. “And you know this, how?” 

“We were interns together,” she explains, “back when we first died, we were very close. But over time, he became very . . . bitter, over his death. It turned his soul dark, and now he spends his days as a freelance villain, corrupting others and breaking the hearts of those who are too trusting.” She scoffs, and Lance is suddenly picking up some personal resentment vibes. 

“Right.” Lance decides to steer them onto another topic. “So, if we can’t trust him, then how do we get those people out of our house?” 

Allura relaxes her posture slightly, once again calming now that the subject isn’t focused on her possibly-past-ex-lover. She clasps her hands in front of her on the desk and meets both Lance’s and Keith’s gazes as she tells them, “Well, you’re going to have to do it yourselves. But don’t worry—like I said, I’m here to guide you. I’ve helped hundreds of others in your situation before. If you do everything as I instruct you, you’ll have those humans out of your home in no time. And you _won’t_ have to exterminate them.” Allura adds this last part with a dark, acerbic scowl. 

Lance exchanges yet another look with Keith, then turns back to Allura with a sunny smile. “That sounds like just what we’re looking for,” he says. 

  
  


_____

  
  


By that night, Pidge has formed a hypothesis. The problem being? Said hypothesis is _ridiculously_ idiotic. 

She’s fairly certain—and she can’t believe she’s legitimately thinking this right now—that there are ghosts living in this house. Most likely, the couple who lived here before she moved in. That would explain why the bathroom light in the attic was on. That would explain the door slamming the moment she tried to go into the attic the first time. Whatever the reason, the ghosts clearly didn’t want her in there. 

So then, why’d they let her go in the second time? Pidge has a hypothesis about that, too. 

The book, _Ghosting 101,_ talks about a place called the Netherworld. Pidge suspects—and really, these are _all_ suppositions—that the reason nothing happened the second time she went into the attic is because the ghosts weren’t _there._ They must’ve gone to this Netherworld place to do their ghostly grocery shopping, or something. Pidge doesn’t know. She’s never been a ghost. 

Anyway, chances are she’s probably wrong about all of it. But why _else_ would the book be addressed to _‘the recently deceased’?_ And why would the couple who lived here have _had_ it when they were still alive, since everything in it is about how to be a ghost? Unless they were just really into strange literature.

All around, the whole thing is just _weird._ And Pidge is exhausted from thinking about it, which is why she decides to save further investigation for the morning and go to bed.

Which is why she becomes so, so pissed when the moaning starts up. 

Yes, _moaning._ And not like pained, _I’m-slowly-bleeding-to-death_ moaning, which honestly would be preferable. No, it’s the kind of moaning that Pidge’s poor asexual fifteen-year-old ears should _never_ be exposed to, and now regrettably are. 

There’s a rational voice in the back of Pidge’s brain that says no _way_ is it Shiro and Adam. Shiro and Adam never so much as _holds hands_ in front of her most of the time. She knows for a fact that when Shiro sends her to run errands every couple of weeks, it’s so he and his husband can have their _alone time,_ and she happily skedaddles and then stops by the library on the way home for good measure, specifically to _avoid_ horrid situations like _this._

But right now, Pidge is tired beyond rationality, and the _noises_ are keeping her from being able to contentedly fall into dreamland, so she throws her covers off and storms out of her room and down the hall, her irritation building right up until the moment she slams her palm against the door and yells: “Knock it off!” 

The moaning does not stop, so with a grumbled string of curses, Pidge bangs on the door again. She continues to knock on it right up until it opens, and her hands connects with Shiro’s ribs. 

Pidge takes in several things at once, even through her fatigue-addled brain. One: Shiro is fully clothed in his flannel pajama bottoms and the _My Little Pony_ T-shirt that Matt had got him as a joke a few years ago (probably not even knowing that Shiro _does,_ in fact, watch _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic_ on Saturday mornings). Two: Shiro does _not_ look like he could have just been imbued in the—Pidge is going to vomit— _throes of passion._ He looks like he was just asleep. He’s even blinking with that disoriented, _I-could-be-sleepwalking_ sleepiness. Three: the moaning is still going on, and it’s not coming from Shiro, and it’s not coming from Adam—she can see him around Shiro, sitting up in bed and reaching to turn the lamp on. He also has a shirt on, and looks just as sleep-interrupted as Shiro. 

Shiro blinks at her, reaching up to rub his eyes. “Pidge?” he yawns, “What . . . Is something wrong?” 

And it hits Pidge at once. _Ghosts._

Shit. And she just woke Shiro and Adam up for no reason. “Uh—no, sorry,” she mutters, “Guess I’m just hearing things. I didn’t mean to wake you up, Shiro . . . I’m sorry,” she repeats. 

Shiro is beginning to frown, slightly concerned now. “It’s okay,” he says, “Did you have a bad dream? Is there something you want to talk about?” 

“I—no.” Pidge shakes her head. This would probably be an even more uncomfortable moment if there wasn’t _still_ moaning going on in the background, but as it is, all Pidge really wants to do is make sure this conversation ends so she can go investigate (re: yell at the ghosts in the attic and go back to bed). “Again, I’m super sorry. I’m going back to bed. Goodnight.” She turns to go back into her room before Shiro can ask anymore questions, and waits with her ear pressed to the door to make sure Shiro closes his and Adam’s. 

When he does, she grabs the books she’d stolen from the attic and slips back out, tiptoeing past her guardians’ door and then quietly up the short flight of stairs down the next hall. By now, the moaning has stopped, but Pidge’s irritation has reached previously uncharted heights. She doesn’t even stop to wonder if she’s going crazy or if she’s about to walk in on ghosts doing things she very much does not want to see. She takes note of the light peeking out from under the door right before she opens it, storming inside to find that sure enough, the attic is filled with light. 

There are two figures standing by the bed. Pidge freezes as soon as she sees them. One of them is a man who looks to be in his early twenties, running a hand through his dark-hair as he says, “I _knew_ that wasn’t going to work,” to the other figure, who is—wearing a bedsheet with holes cut out for eyes. 

“What the hell,” she blurts before she can stop herself. At once, both of the ghosts go completely still, then turn to look at her. The figure in the bedsheet looks ridiculous, but honestly, also a tiny bit unnerving, simply because there’s not _supposed_ to be someone wearing a bedsheet in her new house. 

Finally, the dark-haired one breaks the silence. “Um, hello,” he begins, and raises his hands as if trying to calm a skittish animal. “We come in peace.” 

The bedsheet ghost snorts. “We’re not _aliens,_ Keith,” he says. 

_Keith._ Pidge files the name away. “Yeah, hi,” she says. And then, because even if she is talking to ghosts right now, she’s _still_ a sleep-deprived teenager, “Can the two of you _shut up_ so I can get some sleep? Save the haunting for the morning.” She pauses to reconsider. “Actually, more like noon. I’m starting a new school Monday and I’ve _got_ to catch up on all the Z’s before then.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Keith says. He looks genuinely guilty. “Yeah, sure, we’ll keep it down.” 

The other figure yanks off their bedsheet ghost costume now, revealing themselves to be a scowling, bronze-skinned guy. “What are you doing?” he demands to the first ghost. “We aren’t supposed to be—to be _polite_ to our home invaders! We’re supposed to be scaring them out of here. _Annoying_ them out of here, if that’s what works.”

“Oh, come on, Lance,” Keith says. _Lance,_ Pidge notes. “She’s just a _kid._ We’re not going to scare a kid. Or annoy her, for that matter. Clearly it’s not working anyway.” 

“The scaring is not,” Pidge confirms. “Annoying, however . . .” She eyes them for a moment, pondering, as intrigue squirrels its way into her tired thoughts. “You’re trying to scare us out?” 

“Yeah,” Keith calmly says, while Lance’s scowl deepens and he hisses, _“Don’t share information with the enemy, Keith.”_

“We’re kinda attached to this house,” Keith goes on, then hesitates and gestures at himself and Lance. “In uh, more ways than one . . . And it’s kind of hard enough being dead without dealing with people living in our house.” 

Oh. Suddenly it really hits Pidge that—these people are _dead._ No matter the fact that they look like two completely normal guys just recently graduated from college, they both _died,_ and not very long ago. 

And it feels a little wrong, standing here and demanding them to take _her_ convenience into account when they were here first. It feels a little wrong, because now they’re going to have to share their house with complete strangers, when really, this should have been _their_ house. 

Pidge thinks, again, about the room downstairs with the blue paint and the baby crib, and realizes how much _life_ they had probably planned on filling this house with. An awful taste fills her mouth. 

“Yeah, that . . . that sucks,” she mutters. “I’m sorry. That sounds awful.” 

“It is, kinda,” Keith agrees. He smiles, but it’s wistful. “So you can understand, then, why we’re trying to get rid of you.” 

“Yeah, totally,” Pidge says. She thinks about it for a moment, running hesitant calculations. There’s no way Shiro and Adam are going to believe her if she tells them the ghosts of the previous owners of the house are living in the attic. _But,_ this house has no real significance for any of them, other than the fact that it’s _different._ Maybe Pidge could convince them to find another house. It’s not very likely, but—maybe. 

And if not . . . an idea takes root, plants itself determinedly in her mind. 

“I’ll help you scare Shiro and Adam out,” she says. Keith raises an interested eyebrow, while Lance scowls distrustfully. 

“Really? You’d do that? Why?” Keith wonders. 

“This isn’t my home,” she replies. “I’m not going to be heartbroken if I have to move again. And you guys deserve the peace and quiet. So . . . yeah. I’ll help you.” 

“Oh.” Keith blinks, as if he wasn’t expecting such a simple answer. “Well—thanks. That’s really nice of you.” 

Pidge hums in agreement. But before she can say anything, she’s overcome by a jaw-popping yawn. “Tomorrow,” she decides, when she’s done with that. “We’ll start that tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going back to bed, if you don’t mind.” 

“No, not at all.” Keith smiles again, this time less sad than the first. “Goodnight . . . what’s your name, again?” 

“It’s Pidge,” Pidge tells him. “‘Night, Keith and Lance.” She turns to leave—and then remembers. “Oh, right,” she says, turning back to hold out the book and pamphlet she’d stolen. “These are yours.” 

Tentatively, Keith comes over to take them from her. He’s careful not to touch her hands, but Pidge notes how they’re solid when he takes his things from her. Evidently, being a ghost is nothing like they make it out to be in the movies. 

“Goodnight,” she repeats again, when she realizes she’s been staring for a moment too long. Before the ghosts can get in another word, she spins on her heel and leaves the attic as quickly as she came. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“So, how exactly are we supposed to go about this?” Pidge says the next day, breezing into the attic and flopping onto the couch like she owns the place. Keith, sitting at the opposite end, eyes her bemusedly. 

“Yeah, sure,” he says, “Make yourself at home.” 

Lance, standing over by the window with his arms crossed, scoffs loudly. Keith doesn’t comment on it, and Pidge wisely decides to follow his lead. 

“Is there something in your ghost book?” she presses. “I didn’t finish reading it last night. Is there like, a guide on scaring people? What’s the foolproof scare plan? Or do I need to break out _Monsters Inc._ for inspiration?” 

Keith looks at her for a long moment, as if trying to figure out if she’s really serious or not. Eventually, he must decide she is. “Well, we went to the Netherworld yesterday and met our case worker,” he says, “but all she really told us is that we need to invoke our inhabitants greatest fears and basically hope it’s enough to make them want to leave.” 

“Huh,” Pidge says. She thinks for a moment. “Shiro’s deathly afraid of spiders if that helps?” 

Lance scoffs again. _“Spiders?”_ he says. “You seriously think that’s going to be enough to scare your parents out of here?” 

“They’re not my parents,” Pidge corrects, though she looks over her shoulder to frown at the ghost. “And I don’t _know,_ but I’m at least throwing out suggestions. What are _your_ grand ideas?” 

Lance exchanges a glance with Keith that Pidge can’t interpret, says to him, “We could always call Lotor back.” 

“Lotor?” Pidge inquires. Both ghosts ignore her, as Keith sighs. 

“Lance, no,” he says, “We are _not_ unleashing a demon in the house. That’s the plot of every single horror movie ever, and I don’t want to _torment_ these people.” 

“Well, what are we _supposed_ to do?” Lance demands. “There’s no way we’re going to be able to get two adults to flee for their lives _without_ doing something extreme. And _I,_ for one, am willing to do whatever it takes to get my home back—even if you aren’t.” With that, Lance turns and storms out of the attic, slamming the door shut behind him. Keith watches him go, eyes dark. 

Pidge feels incredibly uncomfortable. “Charming guy,” she says, with the intention of lightening the mood. She thinks she only makes it worse, though. 

“He normally is. Or, at least, he was when he was alive,” Keith says, gripping the arm of the sofa. The TV begins to flicker on and off due to his agitation. “Lately, he’s . . . different, a lot of the time. I’m really worried about him.” 

Pidge frowns. She doesn’t feel much for this Lance guy personally, but it’s hard not to feel sympathy over his situation in general, and especially when Keith looks so upset. “I’m sorry,” she says uselessly. 

Keith takes a deep breath, releases his grip on the couch, and the TV goes dark again and stays that way. “I’m sorry, too, about how he’s acting,” he says. “He doesn’t mean it. He’s just . . . taking death a lot harder than I am.”

“You seem to be taking death pretty well, all things considered,” Pidge notes. Then she wonders how insensitive a thing that is to say. “Uh—sorry.” 

Keith smiles, that same wistful small from the previous night. “It’s okay,” he says, “and yeah, I guess so. I think it’s a side effect of growing up thinking I was going to die young. That’s what people say about kids who grow up in foster care, anyway.” 

Pidge blinks. “You were a foster kid?” 

It’s kind of hard to piece that bit of information into what she knows about Keith so far, considering he’s an adult, and she hasn’t even thought about what his upbringing might’ve been like. In the grand scheme of things, she supposes it’s not the most important information about him. It’s just jarring, having another scrap of knowledge to confirm that Keith and Lance were real people before they died. _Living_ people, with lives and history and dreams—up until two months ago

“Yeah, I was,” Keith tells her. “My dad died in a fire when I was seven. I never knew my mom.” 

Pidge’s heart stutters a little, at how _easily_ Keith says that. She supposes there’s more time and distance and literal death between him and it now, but . . . it’s not that easy for her, yet. She wonders if it ever will be; wonders if it would make her a bad person, if it _was_ easy, or if it ever becomes easy. Like she’s just—forgetting. 

“I . . . mine too.” It hurts to say, but she figures she owes Keith that much, since he’s being so nice and honest with her even though he could, apparently, be unleashing a demon on her instead. “That’s why I moved here, with Shiro and Adam. My house caught on fire in the middle of the night. I barely made it out with my dog. No one else survived.” 

Keith’s eyes darken with empathy. “That sounds awful,” he says. “I’m sorry.” 

Lots of people have told Pidge they’re sorry, these past few months. Honestly, she’s grown incredibly tired and sick of the words. But coming from Keith, they aren’t so bad. They’re—actually kind of comforting. 

Keith gets it. He might be a ghost he wants her out of his house, but he still _understands,_ more than anyone else she’s talked to, at least. 

“Yeah, well.” She clears her throat, suddenly realizing the depths of the conversation she’s plunged herself into, and kind of wanting to swim back into more comfortable, shallower waters. “Anyway. So—if we’re gonna scare Shiro and Adam out, I guess we’d better start planning.” 

Keith graciously lets the subject dropped. “I’ll go grab a notebook,” he says, and when he does, they get right into the plotting. 

  
  


_____

  
  


Over the next couple of weeks, Pidge’s life falls into a very . . . specific routine. She wakes up, drudges through the bland horrors of the American public school system and her added college courses, then comes back home and immediately begins helping Keith and Lance try to make the house seem haunted. 

Well, okay, _technically_ the house is already haunted. Pidge means in the most literal sense of the word. She has a lot of conversations with Shiro that go like this: 

They’re sitting at the kitchen table—Pidge doing homework, Shiro doing work-work—when Keith starts opening and closing the cabinets and Lance turns on the sink. “Woah, do you see that?” she exclaims, making the best of the acting improvisation course she’d taken as an elective last year. Shiro looks over his shoulder, frowning with visible confusion at the cabinets, but gets up to turn off the sink without much thought. “The pipes must be leaking,” he brushes it off with a shrug when Pidge points out how weird it is. Keith sighs in the background. Lance fumes. 

So, yeah. They’re not having much luck. Shiro and Adam both seem to have logical explanations for everything. Pidge, Keith, and Lance are quickly coming to the end of their rope. Especially Lance. 

“I’m coming around more and more to the demon idea,” he says one afternoon. He’s once again standing in the window, soaking up the last of the sun’s rays, and Pidge has coaxed Bae Bae onto the couch next to her. He’s finally coming into the attic without growling, but he’s still wary and jumpy at the slightest movements. Keith isn’t here. Lance says he went to hang out in the desert void outside, and she’s waiting for him to get back. 

It’s a little awkward being up here with just Lance, since of the two ghosts, he’s definitely the more traditionally antagonistic. But she’s a little regretful to say she agrees with him. 

“We might have to,” she concedes. “I mean, nothing else is working. How much do you know about that . . . Lotor guy?” 

“Not much,” Lance admits. “We accidentally summoned him the day you moved in, and he offered to murder you guys for us. Then he offered us the more affordable scare package, which includes some demon named Voltron turning your house into the first season of _American Horror Story.”_

Pidge is unsettled by this information, but tries not to let it show. “Oh,” she says nonchalantly. “Well that’s . . . fun.” 

“Sure,” Lance mutters. The atmosphere becomes uncomfortable silence again. 

Until finally, the words Pidge has felt pressing in her throat for days finally burst out. “Look, I . . . I know you really don’t want me here. And I’m sorry that you hate me. But I want you to know that—I’m _trying,_ okay? I feel really bad about invading your space like this, and I want to help you get your house back.” 

Lance blinks at her, blank for a moment, and then—surprised. As if an apology was the last thing he ever would have expected. 

“I don’t . . . _hate_ you,” he slowly begins. Before he can continue, the window opens and Keith somersaults inside, appearing as if out of midair to land in a crouch on the floor. “Oh, hey Pidge,” he says pleasantly when he sees her. 

And then something— _rockets_ in through the window, something that Pidge’s brain has a hard time percieving. It looks like some kind of—snake monster thing with two heads, one inside the other, like something out of _The Nightmare Before Christmas._ Before she can even process that, though, the large snake thing shoots its way over to her and—

“Kosmo, no!” Keith cries, as the snake rears its head at Bae Bae. Bae Bae has risen up on his haunches to growl in response, tail twitching in agitation and teeth showing in a snarl. But her terrier is far smaller than the monster, and if there’s an impending fight, it dawns on Pidge with horror which one will lose. 

Before she can even _blink,_ let alone move to protect her dog, the snake begins to . . . transform? 

Right in front of her eyes, it shrinks down until it’s only the size of a very large dog, and then it blurs in her vision for a moment and reappears as an _actual dog._ A wolf would be more accurate a description, actually; it’s smaller than before, but still _huge,_ sitting back on its heels and letting its tongue loll out of its mouth endearingly. 

“Um,” Pidge says. Bae Bae seems just as confused, because after a moment he calms down, hesitantly poking his nose out to catch a whiff of the new dog. 

“Darling,” Lance calmly says, “did you . . . _know_ your pet sandworm could transform into a wolf?” 

“Uh.” When Pidge turns to look at him, he’s blinking rapidly, as if he can’t believe what he’s just seen any more than they can. “Don’t think so,” he decides. 

“Well,” Pidge says, as they all observe Bae Bae hop off the couch to go over and sniff curiously at Kosmo. “I guess you have a dog now.” 

“I guess so,” Keith says. 

The most curious thing about the situation, though, might be Lance. After the hype wears off for Bae Bae and he returns to Pidge, Lance comes over to sit on the floor with Kosmo, reaching a hand out to let him sniff experimentally. Kosmo takes a whiff and then immediately flops himself over into Lance’s lap, looking like the happiest giant ghost dog to ever walk the planet. 

Lance settles a hand onto the top of his head, scratching between his ears in the way of practiced dog-owners, and smiles. 

  
  


_____

  
  


On the nights when sleep evades him, Lance wanders around the house. It’s a habit he had picked up long before he died, and even long before he and Keith bought this house. Lance has been a chronic insomniac since he was a child, and death has done nothing to alter that fact. 

That’s one of the reasons why he’d wanted such a big house. When he was a kid and teenager, there had been no way for him to get out his restive energy in the night, since his family’s home was so small that there was nowhere to roam. It had gotten better when he went off to college, because he could stroll around the dorms and find _some_ other student still awake, hunched over their laptop writing a paper at three am with the world’s ungodliest concoction of energy drink and black coffee sitting at their elbow. 

(That’s how Lance met Keith, actually. He’d been sleep-deprived enough but far too awake at once that he hadn’t felt a single shred of anxiety until he’d _already_ asked out the cute, frenetic-eyed boy in the atrocious ‘80s jacket. The rest is history.) 

Tonight is one of those sleepless nights. Which doesn’t mean much, since they’re ghosts and don’t _really_ need to sleep, but it does mean that Lance has nothing to do while Keith _does_ sleep. Lance knows that these days, he can be pretty unpleasant to be around when awake, and he wants to give Keith what little break from him that he can. 

_‘Til death do us part, huh?_ Lance thinks to himself, chuckling humorlessly. He’s eternally relieved and happy that Keith is with him, but he bets that Keith probably isn’t. Sometimes Lance wonders if when Keith promised forever, he actually knew what he was signing up for. 

But then, he supposes that’s a question he can answer himself. Of _course_ Keith didn’t know. _Neither_ of them ever thought something like this could happen. They used to watch _Ghost Hunters_ together, and while Lance believed in ghosts in _theory,_ he’d still made fun of them with Keith over bowls of popcorn and between makeout sessions. He never thought that he and Lance would ever _become_ the ghosts. 

At least now, Lance has Kosmo to come with him. He’d fallen in love with the ridiculous wolf-sandworm the instant he’d blinked his big puppy eyes at him. For some inexplicable reason, Kosmo’s fur is blue, but Lance supposes there are weirder quirks for ghost dogs to have. He feels a bit bad now for disliking Kosmo when he was a sandworm, and has mentally vowed to make it up to him with an eternity of ear scritches and belly rubs. 

One of the worst things about roaming the halls at night is thinking about all the plans he and Keith had for this place. He pauses at the closed door of what was going to be the nursery, emotions stirring uncertainly in his chest. He’s not sure he wants to expose himself to this pain tonight. 

But his hands seem to have a mind of their own, pushing open the door as his feet guide him inside, so he supposes he’s exposing himself to it, after all. Kosmo, at least, follows after him to provide emotional support. 

They weren’t even finished painting the walls. When he flicks on the light, he’s met with the unfinished powder blue, and it brings a lump of agonizing _feeling_ to his throat. His mamá had sent up his old crib as soon as he and Keith moved in, and when he’d had some free time Keith had refinished the wood so the mahogany _gleams._ This room was going to be _perfect._

Everything was perfect. 

“Can’t sleep?” a voice interrupts his brooding from the door. Lance doesn’t look to see who it is; he knows that it’s Pidge. There’s a part of him—the familiar part—that feels immensely guilty over how he’s treated the girl since she moved in. He knows he should say he’s sorry. 

But there’s this new, darker, _angry_ part of him that’s come to rest turbulently within him since his death, and that part says he doesn’t owe her anything. So he doesn’t say he’s sorry. 

But he doesn’t stay silent, either. 

“I wanted five kids, did you know?” he whispers. His eyes are burning, but he blinks back the press of tears, because he’s not going to cry in front of a fifteen-year-old. “We were going to start the adoption process as soon as we’d gotten the major renovations out of the way. Keith . . . I thought, when I told him that, that he wasn’t gonna want to marry me. I didn’t think he wanted kids. But he said we could have—we could have a dozen kids, _twenty_ kids, if that’s what I wanted. He just . . .” He sniffs harshly. “He said he just wanted _me._ And as long as he had me, then he was happy with whatever else I wanted.” 

Slowly, like a wary cat, he hears Pidge pad into the room until she’s standing at his side. “Why five?” she hesitantly wonders. 

“My parents had five. I was the fifth. The baby. The brat.” Lance smiles a little, though he knows it’s so riddled with bitterness that it can hardly be called a smile at all. He turns to look at the amber-eyed girl, finds her already unabashedly staring at him. There’s nothing in her gaze that’s ridiculing, or patronizing, or uncaring. In fact, she has the widest, most inquisitive eyes Lance thinks he’s ever seen on a person. He bets she’s a genius. 

“I don’t mean to act like this, you know,” he says abruptly. “I don’t mean to be . . . to be so awful. But I’m so . . . _so_ angry, lately. All the time. I can’t stop thinking about how _unfair_ this is.” 

“Yeah,” Pidge quietly says. “I think I kind of get it. Not the . . . not the being dead thing. But—the having things taken away thing. The unfair thing. I get that.” 

That dark part of him wants to scoff, but for once, that voice is delegated to the back of his head. He hears the guileless, genuine note in her voice, and recalls a few weeks ago when he’d made a comment about her guardians and she’d said, _“They’re not my parents.”_

“Guess you don’t have to be dead to understand how shitty the universe is,” he mutters, and Pidge—laughs, high and abrupt, like it snuck up on her. She slaps a hand over her mouth as horror fills her bright eyes. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says, “It’s not funny.” 

Lance’s mouth quirks at the corners. “It’s okay,” he says, “You can laugh. Members of the Shitty Circumstances club can laugh.” 

“Is Keith part of the Shitty Circumstances club?” 

Lance scoffs, but good-naturedly. “No way. Keith’s taken to death like he was _born_ to be a ghost. Can you believe he used to be the negative one in our relationship?” 

“It’s pretty hard to imagine,” Pidge says honestly. Lance nods, conceding. He deserves that. 

“Listen . . .” he begins hesitantly. “I guess I just want to say—thanks. I know I’m a nightmare, and you probably don’t even want to help _me,_ just Keith—which is fair. But . . . I’m grateful anyway. Because you don’t have to help us—we’re just a couple dead guys living in your attic, it would be understandable if you _didn’t_ help us. But I’m . . . just, thanks. Thank you, for everything you’re doing.” 

Pidge is quiet for a moment. Then she says, “I haven’t been able to do much. I mean, it’s been over a month, and nothing I’ve tried has worked.” 

“Still.” Lance shrugs, and he smiles. He doesn’t do that much, lately—it pulls strangely at his mouth, like he’s trying to replicate a gesture he’s only read about. “You’re trying. And that’s more than most people would do.” 

Pidge doesn’t seem to know what to say. Keith says she sometimes shuts down in the middle of emotional conversations, and he gets what he means, because the next thing out of the girl’s mouth is an awkward, “Well, I uh—I should try to sleep again. It’s a school night, and I have a presentation in the morning . . .” She shifts uncomfortably on her feet. 

Lance’s next smile comes easier than the first. “Yeah, you should do that,” he says, “Good luck on your presentation.” 

“Thanks—I need it,” she mutters. She smiles back, pats the top of Kosmo’s head, and says, “Goodnight, Lance.” 

“‘Night, Pidge,” he softly replies. He listens to the sound of her footsteps as she leaves, waits for the sound of her door clicking shut. Then he slides to the floor to rest against the crib, buries a hand in Kosmo’s fur, and starts to cry. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“We’re going to have to summon Lotor,” Pidge announces gravely when she enters the attic on Friday. She’d finally given up and flat-out _told_ Shiro and Adam that the house was haunted earlier, and Adam had laughed and said even if the house _was_ haunted, the ghosts would have to make a pretty big statement to get rid of them. 

They’ve tried everything else. If they want to make sure Keith and Lance can have their house back, they’re going to have to do something extreme. Turns out Lance was the true voice of reason, all those times he said they should go ahead and do it. 

Now, Pidge is the one saying they should go ahead and do it. It’s not like she has anything better to do than summon a demon this weekend, anyway. She’s having a hard time making friends with the dumb kids at her school. And hey, maybe the demon will be friendly and she can keep it. 

Lance perks his head up excitedly, but Keith drags his feet. “I don’t know, Pidge . . .” he says with a frown. “Demons are pretty extreme . . .” 

“Yeah, that’s the _point,”_ she says. At Keith’s unconvinced look, she sighs. “Look, I’ve been thinking. And it won’t be _enough_ if you get Shiro and Adam out of here. Someone else is just going to come along and buy the house—unless we give them a _reason_ not to.” 

She lets that sink in for a moment. When understanding dawns in Keith’s face, she nods. “Yeah. Don’t know how we didn’t think of that before—it’s super obvious. Anyway, Lance says we should summon the demon, and _I_ say we should summon the demon. It’s two to one, Keith. We’re summoning a demon.” 

_“Are_ we, though?” Lance ponders, “I mean, I don’t think _Lotor_ is a demon. Lotor’s just a ghost. He’s going to be summoning the demon.” 

“Well, either way,” she says, “A demon will be summoned tonight. I hope you guys have salt.” 

“Wait—how do we even call Lotor, again?” Lance says with a frown, “I forgot.” 

“You just did,” a new voice says. All three of them whirl around to find the guy that must be Lotor lounging against the back of the sofa, observing them with bored amusement. 

“Oh, cool. How did we do that?” Lance asks. 

Lotor sighs. His eyes flash yellow as he explains, “It’s one of those Bloody Mary type of deals. You say my name three times and I appear. Don’t ask why, I don’t know. It’s not like the freelance bio-exoricist handbook existed before I wrote it, and I bullshitted through most of it.” 

“What even _is_ a bio-exorcist?” Pidge wonders aloud, because she still doesn’t know. Lotor turns a sharp-toothed grin on her. 

“Would you like to find out?” 

“Hey, no,” Keith says warningly, and steps forward to settle a protective hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “Pidge is going to help us. There will be no _exorcising_ her. We just need some help with scaring her guardians out of the house.” 

Lotor sighs boredly. “Fine,” he says, “If you want to be _unimaginative_ about it. But I have one condition.” 

Keith raises an eyebrow, wary. Pidge asks with intrigue, “What is it?” 

“Before I perform any helpful deeds, I require payment. And I believe the three of you will be able to carry out the task quite well . . . or die trying,” he muses. Pidge isn’t sure she likes the sound of that, but honestly, she’s still interested in seeing where this is going. 

“Just get to the point,” Keith says impatiently. Lotor rolls his eyes. 

“Fine. Without any explanations or backstory, my requirements are for you to journey through the desert wasteland to the Tower of Haggar. This is the place where you will find my parents, Zarkon and Haggar. I want you to break in and kill them.” 

Pidge, Lance, and Keith all blink at the purple-skinned ghost. Whatever payment they had been expecting Lotor to demand, it hadn’t involved murder. 

But—“Wait,” Pidge says with a frown, “If your parents are in the desert wasteland, doesn’t that mean they’re _dead?_ So how are we supposed to _kill_ them?” 

“With this.” A glowing, purple and black sword materializes out of the air into Lotor’s palm, and he tosses it at Pidge. Keith catches it before she can even think to raise her arms. 

“But the more important question here is: _why?”_ Lance points out. “Why, exactly, do you want us to kill your parents? That’s kind of a lot to demand, even from dead people with no moral obligations to the law.” 

“I _said, without_ _any explanations or backstory,”_ Lotor snaps, literal _flames_ of annoyance flaring in his eyes. “If you want my help, just _do it._ I’ll see you back here later this evening if you succeed.” With that, Lotor snaps his fingers and _poofs!_ out of existence. Pidge blinks at the empty space he occupied mere moments ago. 

“He’s a delightful guy,” she says, to which Keith snorts. She turns to look at both him and Lance, expectant as she says, “So, I guess this means we’re on our way to hunt some ghosts, huh?” 

She definitely doesn’t like the look Keith and Lance exchange, then. And she _definitely_ doesn’t like the regretful way Lance begins, “Actually, Pidge . . .” 

“This is something we’re going to have to do without you,” Keith finishes. “Living people can’t go into any part of the Netherworld. If you tried, it would kill you.” 

If Pidge were any younger or more petulant, she might stamp her foot and whine, _“No fair!”_ As it is, she crosses her arms over her chest and scowls unhappily. 

“Why don’t I _ever_ get to be part of the cool stuff?” she complains. Keith smiles apologetically. Lance ruffles her hair. 

“Don’t worry, kiddo,” he says, “It’ll probably be _super_ boring. And if it’s not, I’ll bring you back an ultra-cool souveneir.” 

That doesn’t make Pidge any less annoyed, but it does appease her enough to at least uncross her arms. “Fine,” she mutters sulkily, “But you’d _better_ not die, or I’m gonna have to come in there and kill you myself.” 

Keith and Lance exchange another look, this one of amusement. 

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Lance vows. She’s going to hold them to that. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“Are we there yet?” Lance wonders, squinting over Keith’s shoulder into the sandy void. Their current mode of transportion is Kosmo: Sandworm Express. Keith snorts. 

“You’ve said that five times in as many minutes,” he says. Lance scoffs. 

“And _how_ would you know that?” he demands. “Do you have a watch? _No._ And how do you know time doesn’t move differently here?” 

Keith is silent for a moment, considering that. “I guess I don’t,” he concedes. Lance smiles victoriously. “Still, by the lack of any _Towers of Haggar_ on the horizon, I’m going to have to say that we’re definitely not there yet.” 

Lance pouts. “Bummer,” he says. Then, “Hey, this would be so much more exciting if we could have an adventurous makeout scene on the way to our possibly impending demise.” 

“That’s true,” Keith says, and Lance gets his hopes up for a moment— _“but,_ we’re not going to. One, because I don’t want to fall off of Kosmo and get lost out here. Two, because hey, look.” He points far of into the distance, and sure enough, something distinctly tower-shaped is emerging on the edge of the sandy horizon. 

_“Finally,”_ Lance groans with relief. But they still have a little ways to go, so he sets his chin back on Keith’s shoulder and hums. “So, why do you think Lotor sent us to murder his parents?” 

“I don’t know,” Keith replies, tone musing. “Maybe we’ll find out.” 

The closer they get to the Tower of Haggar, the more it appears to loom over them. It’s built of a deep purple stone, darker than the purple in the sword Lotor had given Keith, but appearing to be made of the same strong material. It looks a lot like the tower from _Tangled,_ except this is the tower Rapunzel would’ve lived in if she was evil. 

Unlike Rapunzel’s tower, though, there’s a clearly defined set of stairs that wind around the base of the tower to the top. They don’t even have to worry about there not being a side railing, because they’re already dead. If they fall, they can just pick themselves up out of the sand and try again. 

“Hey, this place is kind of nice,” Lance says as they stroll up the steps. “You think after we kill these people, we could move in? Obviously add some personal touches, give the stone a good power-washing.” 

“Obviously,” Keith agrees easily. Lance is reminded at once (as if he could ever forget) how totally in love with him he is, even in death. 

Finally, they reach the top. Lance hesitates in front of the door, raising a hand to knock and then lowering it. “I’m not quite sure what the proper etiquette is, here,” he admits, “Do we barge in? I mean, I doubt they’d just _invite_ us in if they saw your glowy sword.” 

Keith hums, thinking. “I’ve got it,” he says, “I’ll go back down the stairs a little until I’m out of view, and you’ll knock on the door. Say you’re selling like—timeshares, or something, and convince them to invite you in. While you’re distracting them, I’ll sneak in and stab them.” 

“Brilliant,” Lance says, awed by Keith’s impeccable strategy skills. “This is why I married you.” 

Keith smirks. He presses a quick kiss to Lance’s mouth and disappears back down the steps. Lance turns back to the door, runs his hand through his hair, straightens his shoulders, and knocks on the door. 

A moment later, it’s opened by a very large, purple-skinned man with yellow eyes. This must be Zarkon. And, yeah, Lance can totally see the family resemblance. The man eyes him sharply, gaze roving over Lance’s person with suspicion. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he demands. 

Wow. That answers the question of where Lotor’s lack of manners came from. Still, Lance pastes on a perfect, bright smile from his days spent giving tours at the aquarium he worked at while he was in college. “Hello,” he says bubbly, “I’m Lance, and I work with the Netherworld Travel Agency. I was wondering if I could interest you in a summer home on the River of Despair. It’s _lovely_ during the summertime, you know.” 

“We already own a summer home on the River of Despair,” Zarkon rumbles, and goes to slam the door in Lance’s face. Thinking fast, he raises a hand to stop the door before it can close all the way and blurts, “But what about a winter home in the Pit of Gloom? The interest rates on properties are _incredibly_ low at this time of year, and the area is like nowhere else in the Netherworld. Seriously, you _won’t_ want to pass up a deal like this.” 

Zarkon pauses at this, considering. After a moment, he turns and yells over his shoulder, “Hey, honey! Some guy from the NTA is here selling property. Do you want a house in the Pit of Gloom?” 

Lance waits with bated breath, heart pounding as he thinks of how completely _bizarre_ this situation is. After a moment, a voice from within the tower sounds, “Invite him in for tea and we’ll talk!” 

Zarkon steps aside and opens the door. Lance turns up the dial on his smile, hoping the purple ghost won’t lock the door behind him so Keith can get in easily. 

Zarkon does not lock the door. Lance cheers internally. 

He’s led over to a round table in what appears to be the kitchen area and sits down as the larger ghost pours tea into a cup, then sits down across from him. A moment later, a second purple ghost emerges from a back room, wiping off glowing goo from her hands onto a towel. She smiles in greeting when she sees Lance, but he notices that something about it seems weirdly . . . vacant. 

Lotor’s family is definitely a pretty strange bunch. But then, Lance supposes he can’t judge. His family is pretty weird, too. 

“Hello,” the second ghost—the one Lance guesses is Haggar—says. “Oh, your timing is _perfect._ I was _just_ thinking to myself the other day about how I’d love to have a winter home in the Pit of Despair. It’s the perfect amount of gloom to accentuate the season. I’ve heard that if you’re in the best locations, you can _hear_ the cries of the forgotten echoing over the chasm at night.” 

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Lance agrees, even though really, he has _zero_ clue what he’s talking about. “It’s a super soothing sound. My husband and I bought a house there a few hundred winters back, and let me just say, it’s the _best_ decision we’ve ever made. The fog of seasonal depression that crosses over the chasm in the early morning is the most beautiful sight in the Netherworld.” 

Haggar clasps her hands over her chest, then turns to Zarkon. “Oh, dear, we _must_ have one!” 

Zarkon sips his tea and ponders for a moment before nodding. “Alright,” he agrees. 

“Great!” Lance exclaims. Over Haggar’s shoulder, he sees the door slowly beginning to nudge open. He keeps his gaze fixed on the ghost couple. “So, uh, what kind of home are you looking for?” he says. Then, _totally_ fishing for more details on Lotor, he says, “Do you maybe have any children that come to visit on holidays? Are you looking for space to host large gatherings, or more of a cozy mountain cabin up on the ledges?” 

Haggar laughs breezily. “Children? Heavens, no. We had one, once, but he was _terrible,_ so we dealt with him efficiently. Stabbed him in his sleep while we were still alive. The best decision we ever made, wasn’t it, darling?”

Zarkon chuckles. “Indeed,” he agrees. Lance feels his stomach suddenly twist with revulsion, but forces himself to laugh too. Keith is almost right up behind the couple, now. If Lance would have had any qualms about killing this couple before, he _definitely_ doesn’t anymore. Honestly, he kind of wants to take the sword and stab them himself. 

“Okay then,” he says, clapping his hands together. “No kids. _Great._ Well, you’re in luck, because we have an entire selection of honeymoon cabins that I think you would _adore._ I can have one of my interns send up the brochures later for you to look through.” 

“Oh, wonderful,” Haggar says easily. Then she frowns thoughtfully, “Though I must ask, what are the—” 

Haggar never gets to find out the answer to her final question, because with a single _slick_ of the blade, her head goes flying off her neck and into the wall. Her exposed neck skin begins to fizzle everywhere that the blade touched. Honestly, it’s kind of disgusting. 

Zarkon stands up, so quick in his fury that his tea sloshes over the rim of his cup as he stands. “You—” he begins, whirling around to face the person responsible for murdering his wife—and rams straight into Keith’s sword. He begins to dissolve around the blade, then bubbles and fizzes down into a puddle of acrid-smelling goo. 

“Huh.” Lance makes a face at the goo, as Keith pokes at it with the end of the sword, a similar look of distaste on his own face. “If this is our final form, I _definitely_ want to stay how we are,” Lance decides. Keith nods in agreement. 

“Well, I can’t believe that actually worked,” he says. “But I guess it’s time to go home and tell Lotor that we’ve avenged him.” 

“Yeah,” Lance concurs. But then he remembers his promise to Pidge, and scours the room for something to take back to her. His eyes catch on what looks like a potted cactus, except it’s black, with white thorns all over and a couple of small gray flowers poking through. He picks it up, nods in satisfaction, and turns back to Keith with a satisfied grin. 

“Let’s go home.” 

  
  


_____

  
  


“I can’t believe you actually did it,” Lotor says to Keith and Lance, when they finish telling them how their assassination plot went. His yellow eyes flash in disbelief. “I mean, I _genuinely_ can’t believe it. I’ve sent hundreds of people on the quest to destroy my parents, _all_ of them more intelligent than you, and yet _none_ of them ever succeeded. I was getting _so_ sick of having to commission Kolivan for a new Sword of Spectral Patricide each time someone wanted a favor from me. He charges _ridiculous_ rates.” 

Pidge is nearly positive that a _Sword of Spectral Patricide_ isn’t a real thing, and Lotor’s making all this up. Then again, maybe Pidge knows nothing. After all, she didn’t even believe in ghosts until she moved into this house. 

“Well, either way, we did it,” Lance says with a smug grin. Keith hands over Lotor’s sword, dripping with the disgusting ghost goo of his parents’ guts to prove it. Lotor takes it gladly. 

“Now hold up your end of the deal,” Keith says. “Help us get rid of these humans.” 

With a snap of his fingers, Lotor makes good on his promise. A loud _CRASH!_ suddenly booms from somewhere downstairs, and he nods with satisfaction. “Voltron will give them a good scare,” he promises, “but will not harm them . . _too_ badly. When you are ready for it to disappear, simply say its name three times. Now, are we done here?” 

Pidge, Keith, and Lance all look at each other. Then Lance turns back to Lotor, hesitant. “Wait. I have one question.” 

Lotor groans. “Ugh, _why?_ Why can’t you just accept my services and be content like a _normal_ customer?” 

“It’s important,” Lance insists. Then, when he’s sure he holds Lotor’s attention, albeit reluctant, he says, “If you’ve spent all this time seeking vengeance for your death . . . why couldn’t you just kill your parents yourself?” 

Lotor narrows his eyes at Lance for asking the question, and for a moment, he believes he’s about to be run through with his glowing sword. But Lotor, to his surprise, doesn’t stab him. Instead, he sighs, and explains, “My mother was a very powerful witch even before her death. When they died, she put up wards around herself and my father to protect them from me. No matter how many times and ways I tried to break through, I could not. Because of this, I have been forced to roam the Earth for centuries, angry and bitter, unable to pass on until I was avenged.

“. . . Now that I have been, I suppose I owe you thanks,” Lotor finishes with another sigh. “You have no idea how exhaustively anger and bitterness can warp the soul. Now that I am free, I . . . finally feel like I am able to breathe again. So, truly, my eternal gratitude, Keith and Lance. I wish you well in your eternity. Farewell.” 

With a final snap of his fingers, Lotor once again disappears . . . once and for all. Pidge frowns, feeling a sudden sadness wash over her. 

“I feel bad for Lotor,” she says, “What happened to him was awful. I’m glad you were able to help him.” 

“Me too,” Lance agrees. He walks over to where Pidge is standing by the couch and holds out the potted plant he’s been holding since they got back. “Also, I brought you a souvenir. Hope you like it.” 

Upon closer examination, Pidge realizes that it’s a cactus. A strange Netherworld emo cactus. She loves it. 

“Do you have to water Netherworld cactuses?” she wonders as she takes it. Lance shrugs. 

“I dunno. I’ll ask Allura next time I see her.”

Pidge nods at that, satisfied, then settles down to admire her plant and wait. Downstairs, she can hear Shiro and Adam screaming in terror, with occasional crashing and banging noises sprinkled in. 

“Uh . . . when should we stop Voltron?” Keith asks her. She ponders on the question for a moment, then decides, “Let’s give ‘em a few more minutes. I want to make sure Shiro and Adam are _thoroughly_ terrified, so I can give Adam shit about jinxing us when he said the ghosts would have to make a big statement to get us out of here.” 

Lance snorts. “You are . . . _such_ a terrible little gremlin,” he notes. There’s fondness in his voice. Pidge grins back at him. 

“Yeah,” she says proudly, “I am.” 

  
  


_____

  
  


That night, after Pidge goes down to make sure Shiro and Adam are still alive, Lance lays curled up in bed with Keith, head tucked against his shoulder as he turns something over in his head. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he eventually says, sitting up on his elbows to look at him. Keith cracks one eye open, smiling a little as he jokingly teases, “Uh oh.” 

“Shut up,” Lance rolls his eyes, but he can feel his lips tugging up in a mirroring smile. “Do you wanna hear about my personal revelation or not?” 

Keith pushes himself up so he’s sitting, too, teasing giving way to something more serious as he says, “Yeah, I do. Tell me.” 

Lance reaches out to take his hand, turning it palm-up and sliding their fingers together, squeezing tight. “It’s about what Lotor said,” he begins, and takes a deep breath, “about anger, and . . . and being bitter.” 

Keith stills. “Oh?” 

Lance bites his lip, then nods. “Yeah. I . . . These past few months, _I’ve_ been letting myself be consumed with so much . . . _dark_ feeling. It feels like I’ve kind of been losing myself. And, like, I think I’m kind of _justified_ in being angry, seeing as we’re dead, and all. There’s a lot to be angry and sad about.” 

“There is,” Keith agrees. Lance nods again. He hesitates. 

“But I don’t think . . . I don’t think I _want_ to be angry and sad, anymore. Not like this. Not all the time. It’s . . . exhausting. And I think my problem is, I haven’t been focusing on the _good_ things about being dead.” 

Keith looks at him carefully, his wide indigo eyes curious. “You think there are good things about being dead?” 

“Yeah. I do.” Lance squeezes his hand again, and smiles. “I guess I got so lost in everything we were never going to get to have that I . . . forgot, that I already have all the love in the universe. I have _you._ And I’m—sorry, if these past few months I’ve made you feel like you aren’t enough. You are. I love you, Keith, and I’m _so_ glad you’re with me, even if you didn’t mean to promise _‘death won’t do us part,’_ in our vows.” 

_“‘Til death do us part,’_ is a vow I never intended to obey, anyway,” Keith says with a smile of his own. Blinding yet soft at once—the strange dichotomy of his nature that Lance has always wondered at. Keith’s smiles are like daylight: they bring the promise that there’s always going to be another day together. “I always planned on following you around forever. Do you really think I could ever function without you? I didn’t even know what a _saucepan_ was before I met you, Lance.” 

Lance laughs, abrupt and bright, at the memory of College Student Keith. He truly was the most disastrous boy Lance had ever met. Still is, but in all the best possible ways. 

“I love you,” he repeats, because even after all this time, it’s never stopped being true. It’ll _never_ stop being true. 

Keith wraps his arms around Lance’s neck to pull him in, smiling soft and eyes glowing bright as he tells him, “I love you too.” 

He kisses him, pouring all the warmth of a million suns into him, and Lance thinks that long as he has his warmth and his smiles to live on, even the coldness of death won’t be able to freeze his heart. 

  
  


_____

  
  


When Pidge comes down to breakfast the next morning, yawning and in dire need of coffee, she enters the kitchen onto a sight she never would have expected to see. 

Shiro and Adam are sitting at the table, nursing cups of coffee and multiple bruises. Shiro has a shallow cut through his left eyebrow, and some of Adam’s hair is singed, but they’ll live. 

What’s unexpected, however, is that _Lance and Keith_ are also sitting at the table. Also with cups of coffee, and wearing matching guilty smiles. 

Shiro looks like he’s past the point of caring about the fact that two ghosts are sitting at his table, or that he can now see them. Adam looks like he just wants to go back to bed. 

“Oh . . . Heyyy . . .” Pidge says slowly, trying to assess the amount of awkward in the room. Her calculations say on a scale of one to ten, it’s about two billion. 

Shiro gives a long-suffering sigh and nods to the one remaining empty chair. “Sit,” he says. She sits. 

“So I see you all have met,” Pidge notes. Shiro and Adam fix her with unimpressed stares. Keith and Lance shrug. 

“We, uh, kind of told them everything,” Keith says. 

“What?” Pidge demands, “How could you do that?” 

“The better question,” Shiro interrupts, stare dead enough as it focuses on Pidge to bring to mind an image of her new cactus. “Is how could _you. Let a demon into our home?”_

PIdge cringes. “It’s really not as bad as you’re making it sound . . .” she mutters. 

“Not as bad?” Adam cries. “A _demon with lion hands set my hair on fire._ And you’re saying it’s _not that bad?”_

Pidge reevaluates. “Well, when you put it like that . . .” 

Shiro sighs a second time. “No matter,” he says, “I’m going to let it slide, considering you were _trying_ to do something good to help your friends. But if you _ever_ let a demon into the house again . . .” He doesn’t need to finish the threat. Pidge gets the message. 

“I swear, I’ll never let a demon into the house again,” she vows. Then she pauses, glancing at Keith and Lance. “Right?” she asks. 

“I can’t think of a situation when we’d need to summon a demon again,” Lance says with a shrug. “So, yeah, you’re probably good to make that promise.” 

“Okay, then, yeah,” Pidge nods. “No demon summoning. I swear on Lance’s grave.” 

_“Hey,”_ Lance protests with a frown. Pidge smiles angelically back at him. Then she remembers how bizarre it is that she’s sitting at a table with all the other occupants of her house—well, except for the dogs—and asks, “So, uh, what’s with the big breakfast get-together?” 

“Lance and I had to talk to Shiro and Adam about some things,” Keith tells her. “Clear the air. Make sure we’re on the same page.” 

“Oh,” Pidge frowns. “So you . . . you told them you want us out, huh?” 

Even though she’s known since the beginning that this day was coming, it still fills her with heavy sadness now that it’s here. The truth is, she’s gotten really attached to Keith and Lance over the few months she’s been here. She isn’t sure she wants to say goodbye to them. 

Which is why her heart lifts with tentative hope when Shiro says, “Actually, no.” 

She turns to look at him, brows creasing together. “No?” she repeats. 

“No,” Lance repeats. She turns back to him, and finds him grinning. “We told them we want you to stay here. Preferably forever.” 

Shiro inhales deeply through his nose, pinches the bridge of it between his thumb and index finger. “Let’s,” he says slowly, _“not_ talk about this in terms of forever yet. Because I have now been made aware of how _literal_ you mean it to be, and am not mentally capable of dealing with it before my coffee kicks in.” 

“Wait.” Pidge glances back and forth between her guardians and her ghost friends, a slow smile beginning to creep onto her own face. “You—you want us to stay here? You’re cool with that?” 

“We have some . . . conditions,” Lance says. “I want a say in all of the renovations that are going to be done around here. I _refuse_ to live in a house with tasteless, soulless decor. But aside from that.” His grin brightens up a notch further. “Guess we’re stuck with you as roommates.” 

And Pidge . . . Pidge is so happy that she _launches_ herself at the ghost, laughing as his arms come around to catch her as she latches her own around his neck. “This is— _so_ great,” she says, blinking away the slight prickling heat behind her eyes. “I—I was gonna respect your wishes, you know. If you wanted us to leave, we were going to leave. But I was going to miss you _so much,_ and I’m _so_ glad you’re letting us stay. I just . . . _thank you._ Really, Lance. Thanks.” 

“No,” Lance shakes his head and squeezes her tighter, “Thank _you._ I’m really glad you’re staying too, Pidge. We both care about you a lot.” 

Pidge smiles even more than she thought she could, hugs her friend as tightly as she can. And if a few traitorous tears slip out before she pulls away—well, no one says anything about them. Because she would incinerate them with one of her robots that she programmed to shoot lasers if they did. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“I’m home!” Pidge announces to the universe at large as she glides into her house, tossing her backpack onto the couch in the living room and heading down the hall to the kitchen for a snack. Lance is there in the hall, a can of paint at his feet and a rolling brush dripping soothing moss green onto the tarp below him as he turns to smile at her. 

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, “How was school?” 

“Good,” she says, “Me and this kid Hunk programmed a Roomba to shoot spitwads at Mr. Sendak in Robotics club.” 

Lance smiles proudly. “Sounds like a productive day,” he says. 

“Yeah, it was,” she says, “The walls look great, by the way. I’m glad you didn’t let Shiro paint them orange.” 

Lance is still shuddering in horror, presumably at the image the color orange brings into his mind, when Pidge turns down the hall to swing into the kitchen. 

Shiro and Keith are sitting at the table, heads bent together over a bunch of blueprints. They both look up when she enters and smile in greeting. 

“Don’t eat too much,” Shiro warns as she pokes her head into the fridge. “I’m starting dinner in half and hour. Are you going to do your homework?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Pidge waves him off, emerging from the fridge with a cheese stick and a limoncello La Croix. Shiro opens his mouth again, and she cuts him off before he can say anything. “And _yes,_ I remember that I have a Zoom call with Dr. Coran later.” She rolls her eyes fondly. Honestly, Shiro is _such_ a dad, sometimes. 

“How’re the blueprints coming along?” she asks as she bites into her cheese stick. 

“Good,” Keith says with a nod. “Though we’re trying to figure out what to do with this room, here.” He points, and she peers over his shoulder for a moment before deciding, “Indoor swimming pool.” 

Shiro and Keith look at each other for a moment, then shrug. Keith writes something down in his notebook. Pidge turns to leave the kitchen and heads upstairs to her room. Bae Bae sits up excitedly when she opens the door, tail wagging happily. Kosmo grumbles, opens up one eye to see what the fuss is about, and when he sees it’s just Pidge, he covers his eyes with a paw and goes back to sleep. 

Pidge snorts as she collapses onto her bed next to the dogs, sighing happily at a successful day’s work. Downstairs, she can still faintly hear the sounds of voices talking downstairs, and Lance shrieking when someone wanders into the hall and gets too close to the wet paint. Kosmo snuffs, shifts, and settles his blue head onto her stomach, and she reaches up to scratch behind his ears. 

“Our family’s kind of weird, huh?” she says. “I bet you didn’t expect us, just as much as we didn’t expect ghosts.” Kosmo grunts, and Pidge quietly laughs before making herself more comfortable against her pillow. She closes her eyes and listens to the sound of her family moving around downstairs, to the clatter of pots and pans as Shiro starts preparing dinner. 

It’s definitely not the home Pidge ever expected to live in. But it _is_ home, even if it’s different from the one she shared with her parents and brother. It’s filled with people she loves, with laughter and life spilling through every window and doorway, with security and the promise that there will be another day, just like this. 

Pidge imagines a lifetime of days spent just like this, and thinks that it doesn’t sound so bad. In fact, she thinks, smiling as the thought occurs to her, cuddling closer to her dogs and right on the verge of her habitual afternoon nap—it actually sounds pretty perfect. 


End file.
